Another church visit

Before Sunday, I hadn't visited any new churches in quite a while, mainly because I'd lost most of my enthusiasm for the project. I had visited quite a few self-identified progressive churches in my city in 2006 and 2007, but none of them really worked for me. I was running out of new places to visit in my immediate area, and I wasn't sure what I was looking for anyway.

Sunday, I crossed a certain well known and rather large orange bridge to an adjacent county. As the crow flies, it wasn't that far away; for that matter, as the car drives, it wasn't that far away either. A thirty minute drive, tops. But I did somehow feel like I had crossed over into another world, although I'm not sure that this feeling made any sense. I live in a large metropolitan area and people do travel long distances some times to attend particular churches. The bridge was probably more a psychological barrier than anything else.

I had visited one other church in this county; that one was self-consciously progressive and had a progressive pastor, who tended to be somewhat less dressed up than the couple of men in dark gray suits and ties who stood at the door and greeted people as they walked in. I know it is not unheard of for men to wear suits in church, but the conservatism of those suits and the fact that the male attenders in general weren't necessarily wearing that sort of attire always made me feel a little weird or even intimidated. I wasn't sure what their official capacity was, if anything. In reality, that church never grabbed me for other reasons; the times I stayed after for coffee hour I found myself completely ignored by the rest of the congregation, even though I was obviously a visitor. Must have been the jeans. After a couple of tries, I never went back.

Well, the church I visited last Sunday wasn't like that. The attenders were dressed generally rather nicely, but none of the men were wearing suits, thank God. Actually, men in general seemed to be in somewhat short supply here. A clear majority of the maybe 50 people in attendance were female, and most of those were at least as old as I am (and I'm not that young.) There were some men, and a smattering of younger people, but the demographic did skew a certain way.

I felt the usual nervousness that I feel when visiting churches, as if I were some sort of interloper in a world that I was not a part of. The woman sitting next to me, though, was extremely nice and she told me at the end of the service that she hoped that I would come again. Part of the interloper feeling was, ironically, made more prevalent by the extreme informality of the proceedings, where the pastor (who was charming, outgoing, and cheerful) engaged members of the congregation frequently, addressing them by name, joking with them--and, of course, I was not member of the club of known people, so I was in that sense a definite outsider. This was not a somberly formal or sacramental worship service. The chairs were placed in a circle, and I could not help but notice that the pastor, although wearing a formal robe, was also barefoot. There was no communion this particular Sunday (I don't know how often they celebrate it; it could be once a month, but if so, apparently not the first Sunday of the month.) There was also no passing of the peace, which surprised me--I think this was the first Protestant church service I had attended in the last two years that did not engage in that practice. The overwhelmingly dominant presence was that of the pastor. I'm not saying that was a bad thing--she just had a dynamic personality and was involved in almost every aspect of the service.

As I sat in church, I contemplated the informality of the worship, and whether such informality was really my cup of tea. I think my Quaker background ruined me for life; I think I like something contemplative, sublime, uplifting, maybe even a little solemn, when I attend a form of worship. I realized that this particular church probably wasn't for me, but I also recognized that I had nothing against what they were doing either. It was fine, it was friendly. If I had gone back repeatedly, the pastor would probably have gotten to know me and started engaging me in the service like she engaged the others. If church for me were mainly about community, this church might actually have had considerable appeal.

The service included two readings, one from the Bible and one from an American poet. I liked the eclecticism in that. The pastor did talk about God and even made references to Jesus that suggested that she thought he was divine, so I was sure that the pastor was more theologically orthodox than I was; but the service was not that heavy on theology. It was more about community, really, and it seemed liberal enough that it could almost have passed for a Unitarian Universalist service.

Community is very much a part of what many churches offer, and there is certainly nothing wrong with that. If I had a clearer idea of what I was looking for in a church, if indeed I was looking for anything at all, then maybe I could have done a better job of evaluating churches when I attended them. I spent some time during the service last Sunday thinking about this problem of not really knowing what my criteria were. To be honest, though, I didn't see myself as church shopping, but rather church window shopping. I wasn't looking for a church home because I really didn't think that it was likely I would find such a thing. Instead, going to church (when I did go, which has become less frequent) was more about sampling experiences, but not with any goal in mind.

It was not an unpleasant time, the pastor was likable, and I had at least one friendly encounter with a member, but I could see no compelling reason to make a half-hour drive over a bridge to visit this church again.